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Jihad in Glasgow

Jihad in Glasgow
By Jacob Laksin
FrontPageMagazine.com | July 2, 2007

This was not how Gordon Brown hoped to begin his term as Britain’s new prime minister. But shortly after assuming office last Wednesday, Brown found himself facing a full-blown terror spree: 36 tension-filled hours that saw two car bombs discovered in London and found grim punctuation this weekend when a Jeep Cherokee, manned by Islamic terrorists, crashed in a fiery blaze into the main terminal of Scotland’s Glasgow Airport.

No one familiar with the events of recent years will surprised to learn that the suspects are all Muslims. Media accounts of the Glasgow attack described the men as “Asian,” a common shorthand for Britons of Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin, and witness accounts left little doubt about the attackers’ faith tradition: Those on-scene in Glasgow recalled that one of the attackers, even as he was engulfed in flames, bellowed “Allah, Allah” while resisting police. And while reports that one of the attackers had donned a Hamas-style suicide belt await further corroboration, British counter-terror forces have no illusions about whom they’re dealing with. Lord John Stevens, a former police chief who has been tapped as a terrorism adviser to Brown, made that abundantly clear when he noted that “[t]his weekend's bomb attacks signal a major escalation in the war being waged on us by Islamic terrorists.”

That prompts the question: Why now? By way of explanation, some news reports in the wake of the Glasgow attack cited a posting last week on an Islamist chat room. Signed by one Osama al-Hazeen, reputedly a repeat visitor to the site, it threatened attacks in retaliation for the war in Iraq and the knighting of author Salman Rushdie, “who insulted and slandered Islam.” The first theory in particular appeals to those, on the antiwar Left and isolationist Right, who see the U.S.-led military intervention in Iraq as the wellspring of jihadist wrath. The obvious flaw in that argument is that Scotland is headed by a nationalist government whose first minister, Alex Salmond of the Scottish National Party, has been the leading opponent of the war in Iraq, even supporting efforts to impeach Tony Blair over the invasion. The Glasgow attack thus demonstrates yet again that opposition to U.S.-foreign policy is no protection against Islamic terror, while exposing the hollowness of jihadists’ grievances and the opportunism of their apologists in the West.

Far more credible is the explanation suggested by Nile Gardiner, a fellow in Anglo-American security policy at the Heritage Foundation. “The timing of the attack is significant because al-Qaeda associates attacks with historical developments and we are just days away from the anniversary of the 7-7 bombings,” Gardiner told FrontPage yesterday. The recent attacks, he said, are also meant to test the resolve of the new British government. “Al-Qaeda thinks that, compared to Blair, [Gordon] Brown is the weaker link, and the attack in Glasgow is part of their strategy to split Britain off from the United States in the war on terror.” Gardiner speculated that Brown is unlikely to cave in to demands to withdraw forces from Iraq, though he noted that “many on the Left will be clamoring” for precisely that.

Brown’s task now is to show that he can be trusted to handle the terror threat. His early moves have been encouraging. Beyond unequivocally condemning terrorism as “an act of evil in all circumstances,” and sparing his countrymen familiar platitudes about the “religion of peace,” the Scottish prime minister has sought to give police broad powers to conduct investigations. Brown also revealed his plans to push forward a slate of counterterrorism measures, among them a provision to allow prosecutors to use evidence collected by phone and email taps in terrorism trials and another that would enable police to detain terror suspects for upward of 90 days without charge. (On the latter measure, Brown finds strong opposition from the Tories, a fact that goes a long way toward explaining the electoral weakness of Britain’s leading conservative party.) To those who wondered whether Blair’s successor would have his clarity about the terrorism threat, it was a welcome sign that Britain is not about to unfurl the white flag.

Authorities, to be sure, have also benefited from the ineptitude of the terrorists. For example, the London car bombs were evidently so crudely made that it would have taken nothing short of divine intervention for their lethal contents -- including gas, gasoline and nails -- to explode as intended. Similarly, security officials have said that one of the suspects in the planned London attacks allowed a “crystal clear” picture of him to be snapped by the city’s security cameras. Meanwhile, the driver of the Jeep in Glasgow plowed straight into the airport security posts, which prevented him from driving into the busy terminal. One shudders to imagine the carnage that would have ensued had the would-be terrorists been competent as well as crazed.

It seems almost unnecessary to point out that the latest attacks show that the Islamists’ war is global in scope and that it is driven more by religious fanaticism than a rational response to the policies of the West. But of course that elementary point needs restating when it eludes Democratic presidential candidates like John Edwards, who has declared that the “global war on terror” is a fiction, conjured up by the Bush administration needlessly to frighten Americans. That line may gladden the hearts of Democratic primary voters, but in a world where even Scottish civilians have to fear for their lives, Edwards’s see-no-terror approach is the closest that contemporary politics comes to fantasy.

British authorities are to be commended for successfully averting two (maybe more) car bomb attacks in London last week. At the same time, much of the reaction of Britain’s counter-terrorism community reveals that the country is not wholly prepared to deal with the terrorism threat.

Let's begin with the contradictory statements made by British authorities after the car bombs had been identified. On one hand, Britain’s new home secretary, Jacqui Smith, said after an emergency meeting of top officials that “we are currently facing the most serious and sustained threat to our security from international terrorism.” But other British authorities claimed that “they found no link between the defused car bomb and any terrorist group.” This sharp contradiction is indicative of the tough political background to the UK’s counter-terrorism efforts.

The problem is this: Since the “7/7” attacks, authorities have hesitated to define the enemy. For London’s political establishment, any reference to the religious or ideological motivations of the terrorists is to be avoided. Examined closely, this attitude is the result of layers of “expertise” provided by academic “specialists” who advise against any statements that, as they see it, would exacerbate domestic tensions with the domestic Muslim community.

Hence, British authorities have preemptively dropped any reference to the cause of the terrorists’ war -- namely, Islamic jihadism -- while failing to outline its global scope. By default, then, the government has conceded to the Islamists a political victory in the "battle of ideas."

A second series of questions accompanying the immediate debate about last week’s plot centered on the alleged link to al-Qaeda. The media went back and forth on the theory of Bin Laden’s responsibility -- as if this single factor would shape the strategy to respond. To be successful, British investigators must bypass the dead-ended guessing about al-Qaeda’s formal role and spend their energies and time on the more important issue: Islamist penetration of British society.

Bin Laden and Zawahiri may or may not have ordered this specific operation; al-Qaeda’s central apparatus may or may not be in charge of its execution; and the perpetrators may or not be professional terrorists. Of greater consequence for counterterrorism efforts is finding out who indoctrinated those who planted last week’s bombs and procuring detailed information about jihadist cells in the UK. Bin Laden will one day pass from the scene. But unless confronted, Britain’s jihadist network will live on.

The question of whether the terrorists were “homegrown” or “international” circulated with dizzying frequency last week. Neither explanation is reassuring for the authorities. If the terrorists are “homegrown,” it reopens the debate about the radicalization of the British Muslim community. Obviously, officials want to avoid the matter. If, on the other hand, the terrorists are said to be “international,” with links to outside terrorist networks, officials would have to grapple with an equally unappealing fact: The followers of jihad, whether “homegrown” or “international,” operate without boundaries.

Failure to consider the underlying cause of jihadist terrorism has stunted Britain’s intellectual debate. Consider that in the most recent plot, the two cars were declared as “linked” because the bombs they contained were made of the same material. But what if the two car bombs were filled with different types of explosives? Would they then have belonged to two different conflicts? It would have been odd in the extreme for police during the London Blitz of 1940 to wonder whether the bombs falling on the city were “linked” because they were made of the same material. But because many in Britain still refuse to acknowledge that they are at war with Islamic terrorism, we get the kind of official analysis that we saw last week.

Surveying the situation from a distance, it seems that even the successes that British authorities have had can be exaggerated. For instance, the government prides itself for having installed more cameras in London than in all other European cities combined, a fact acknowledged by commentators who noted that the manhunt launched for the suspects last week was made possible by the release of film from London’s surveillance cameras. But the reason that this surveillance is so extensive is that for years the authorities were on the defensive, having caved in to those lobbies who insisted that the government should not target terrorists before they strike. Resources were diverted to spy on the terrorists, but little was done to preempt their attacks. The United States is under similar pressure by its own internal critics to follow the same path and stop monitoring the terrorists.

Fortunately, British officials are becoming more clear-sighted. Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, former head of Britain’s joint intelligence committee, was among the first to conclude that the two car bombs were related to the attack on Glasgow Airport. It is the first step to understanding that what the UK is facing is not dispersed acts of violence but a war that is grounded in the expansion of Wahabism, Salafism and other forms of radical ideologies. There is a standing order by al-Qaeda and fatwas by Salafi asking their allies, local and international, to "strike into the heart of infidels, including the British."

Other strategic considerations are also in play. There is little doubt that the Islamists want to test the new cabinet of Prime Minister Gordon Brown and to drag him into an “engagement.” This in turn would provide extremists in Britain’s Muslim community the occasion to demonize Brown and weaken his resolve to confront both domestic and international terrorism. The jihadists’ move is clear, but the question remains: Is Britain seeing clearly?

The largely failed (and/or thwarted) acts of jihad terrorism at the end of this past week in London and Glasgow show once again that the aim of the current Islamic crusade against the West is global in scope, is not about Iraq and is not a fringe development in Islam itself.

What Samuel Huntington aptly termed “Islam’s bloody borders” around the globe—flow from the timeless logic of jihad. Franz Rosenthal, the late (d. 2002) Yale University scholar of Islam, who, 50 years ago, translated Ibn Khaldun's classic Introduction To History, also wrote a seminal essay entitled “On Suicide in Islam” in 1946. Rosenthal’s research confirmed how Islam extolled “suicidal” martyrdom attacks:

While the Qur’anic attitude toward suicide remains uncertain, the great authorities of the hadith leave no doubt as to the official attitude of Islam. In their opinion suicide is an unlawful act....On the other hand, death as the result of “suicidal” missions and of the desire of martyrdom occurs not infrequently, since death is considered highly commendable according to Muslim religious concepts. (Emphasis added.) However, such cases are no[t] suicides in the proper sense of the term.

These orthodox Islamic views have been reiterated by Yusuf Al Qaradawi—“spiritual” leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, head of the European Fatwa Council, and immensely popular Al-Jazeera television personality, as well as Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University, the most prestigious center of Muslim learning in Sunni Islam. Sheikh Qaradawi openly endorsed murderous Palestinian homicide bomber “martyrdom” operations against innocent Israeli citizens (all of whom are considered “combatants” who obstruct the “call to Islam”) during a fatwa council convened in the heart of Europe (in Stockholm, July, 2003). For the past decade, Sheikh Tantawi, who is the nearest equivalent to a Muslim Pope, has also confirmed the legitimacy of homicide bombing of Jews, characterizing these grisly attacks as

…the highest form of Jihad operations…the young people executing them have sold Allah the most precious thing of all…every martyrdom operation against any Israeli, including children, women, and teenagers, is a legitimate act according to [Islamic] religious law, and an Islamic commandment, until the people of Palestine regain their land

On July 25, 2005, historian David Littman attempted to deliver a prepared text in the joint names of three international NGOs, but was prevented from doing so by the intervention of Islamic members of the United Nations Sub-Commission on Human Rights. Following repeated interruptions he was unable to complete his speech. Littman was simply trying to support the argument that those who issue fatwas to kill innocent people in the name of Islam are not real Muslims and should be treated as apostates. But as he noted, just before the 7/7/05 London bombings a major conference of 170 Muslim scholars from 40 countries meeting in Amman, Jordan gave an opinion in a Final Communiqué, dated July 6, 2005:

It is not possible to declare as apostates any group of Muslims who believes in Allah the Mighty and Sublime and His Messenger (may Peace and Blessings be upon him) and the pillars of faith, and respects the pillars of Islam and does not deny any necessary article of religion.

The most recent attempted atrocities in London and Glasgow are contemporary manifestations of foundational Islamic imperatives, rooted in jihad. Denial of this intimate relationship is untenable and dangerous, given the weight of confirmatory evidence, past and present.

Umar Ibn al-Khattab (d. 644), was the second “rightly guided caliph” of Islam, the word caliph deriving from Koran 2:30, and the Muslim notion of the successor to Islam’s prophet Muhammad, a vicegerent of Allah, on earth. During his reign, which lasted for a decade (634-644), Syria, Iraq and Egypt were conquered. Umar was responsible for organizing the early Islamic Empire into a supranational Muslim Caliphate. Alfred von Kremer, the seminal 19th century German scholar of Islam, described the “central idea” of Umar's regime, as being the furtherance of “...the religious-military development of Islam at the expense of the conquered nations.” The predictable and historically verifiable consequence of this guiding principle was a legacy of harsh inequality, intolerance, and injustice towards non-Muslims observed by von Kremer in 1868 (and still evident in Islamic societies at present):

It was the basis of its severe directives regarding Christians and those of other faiths, that they be reduced to the status of pariahs, forbidden from having anything in common with the ruling nation; it was even the basis for his decision to purify the Arabian Peninsula of the unbelievers, when he presented all the inhabitants of the peninsula who had not yet accepted Islam with the choice: to emigrate or deny the religion of their ancestors. The industrious and wealthy Christians of Najran, who maintained their Christian faith, emigrated as a result of this decision from the peninsula, to the land of the Euphrates, and ‘Umar also deported the Jews of Khaybar. In this way ‘Umar based that fanatical and intolerant approach that was an essential characteristic of Islam, now extant for over a thousand years, until this day [i.e., written in 1868]. It was this spirit, a severe and steely one, that incorporated scorn and contempt for the non-Muslims, that was characteristic of ‘Umar, and instilled by ‘Umar into Islam; this spirit continued for many centuries, to be Islam's driving force and vital principle.

Umar waged devastating jihad campaigns, and imposed severe limitations upon the vanquished non-Muslims aimed at their ultimate destruction by attrition. He also introduced fanatical elements into Islamic culture that became characteristic of the Caliphates which succeeded his. Indeed, the complete absence of basic freedoms of conscience and expression in these early Islamic Caliphates—while entirely consistent with mid-7th century mores—has remained a constant, ignominious legacy throughout Islamic history, to this day.

C. Snouck Hurgronje, the great Dutch Orientalist observed in 1916 (p.99) that even at the nadir of Islam's power following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the jihad imperative to complete the unfulfilled task of world Islamization, via the re-creation of a supranational Islamic Caliphate, remained a potent force among the Muslim masses:

…it would be a gross mistake to imagine that the idea of universal conquest may be considered as obliterated…the canonists and the vulgar still live in the illusion of the days of Islam’s greatness. The legists continue to ground their appreciation of every actual political condition on the law of the holy war, which war ought never be allowed to cease entirely until all mankind is reduced to the authority of Islam—the heathen by conversion, the adherents of acknowledged Scripture [i.e., Jews and Christians] by submission.

…the common people are willingly taught by the canonists and feed their hope of better days upon the innumerable legends of the olden time and the equally innumerable apocalyptic prophecies about the future. The political blows that fall upon Islam make less impression…than the senseless stories about the power of the Sultan of Stambul [Istanbul], that would instantly be revealed if he were not surrounded by treacherous servants, and the fantastic tidings of the miracles that Allah works in the Holy Cities of Arabia which are inaccessible to the unfaithful. The conception of the Khalifate [Caliphate] still exercises a fascinating influence, regarded in the light of a central point of union against the unfaithful (i.e., non-Muslims).

Nearly a century later, the preponderance of contemporary mainstream Muslims from Morocco to Indonesia, apparently share with their murderous, jihad terror waging co-religionists from al-Qaeda the goal (if not necessarily supporting the gruesome means) of re-establishing an Islamic Caliphate. Polling data released April 24, 2007 from a rigorous face-to-face University of Maryland/ WorldPublicOpinion.org interview survey of 4384 Muslims conducted between December 9, 2006 and February 15, 2007-1000 Moroccans, 1000 Egyptians, 1243 Pakistanis, and 1141 Indonesians-reveal that 65.2% of those interviewed-almost 2/3, hardly a "fringe minority"-desired this outcome (i.e., “To unify all Islamic countries into a single Islamic state or Caliphate”), including 49% of "moderate" Indonesian Muslims. The internal validity of these data about the present longing for a Caliphate is strongly suggested by a concordant result: 65.5% of this Muslim sample approved the proposition “To require a strict [emphasis added] application of Shari'a law in every Islamic country.” Moreover, an earlier survey of British Muslims indicated that up to 40% of them wished to replace Britain’s current liberal democratic system with the Shari’a.

Notwithstanding ahistorical drivel from Western Muslim “advocacy” groups such as the Muslim Association of Britain, which lionizes both the Caliphate and the concomitant institution of Shari'a—despite their legacy of brutal, often genocidal aggression, and imposition of a blatantly discriminatory, totalitarian system of rule devoid of the most basic human rights—as promulgators of “a peaceful and just society”, the findings from these polls of Muslims across the Islamic world, and within the United Kingdom, are ominous.

Ibn Warraq has observed aptly that the most fundamental conception of a Caliphate, “...the constant injunction to obey the Caliph-who is God's Shadow on Earth”, is completely incompatible with the creation of a “rights-based individualist philosophy.” Warraq illustrates the supreme hostility to individual rights in the Islamic Caliphate, and Islam itself, through the writings of the iconic Muslim philosopher, jurist, and historian, Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406), and a contemporary Muslim thinker, A.K. Brohi, former Pakistani Minister of Law and Religious Affairs:

[Ibn Khaldun] All religious laws and practices and everything that the masses are expected to do requires group feeling. Only with the help of group feeling can a claim be successfully pressed,...Group feeling is necessary to the Muslim community. Its existence enables (the community) to fulfill what God expects of it.

[A.K. Brohi] Human duties and rights have been vigorously defined and their orderly enforcement is the duty of the whole of organized communities and the task is specifically entrusted to the law enforcement organs of the state. The individual if necessary has to be sacrificed in order that that the life of the organism be saved. Collectivity has a special sanctity attached to it in Islam.

In contrast, Warraq notes, “Liberal democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom and attaches all possible value to each man or woman.” And he concludes,

Individualism is not a recognizable feature of Islam; instead the collective will of the Muslim people is constantly emphasized. There is certainly no notion of individual rights, which developed in the West, especially during the eighteenth century.

Almost six decades ago (in 1950), G.H. Bousquet (pp. 104-5), a pre-eminent modern scholar of Islamic Law, put forth this unapologetic, pellucid formulation of the twofold totalitarian impulse in Islam:

Islam first came before the world as a doubly totalitarian system. It claimed to impose itself on the whole world and it claimed also, by the divinely appointed Muhammadan law, by the principles of the fiqh, to regulate down to the smallest details the whole life of the Islamic community and of every individual believer....the study of Muhammadan law (dry and forbidding though it may appear to those who confine themselves to the indispensable study of the fiqh) is of great importance to the world today.

And sowing terror in order to promote the Islamization of infidel territories, is consistent with jihad tactics that date back well over a millennium.

Ibn Hudayl, a 14th century Granadan author of an important treatise on jihad, explained the original methods which facilitated the violent, chaotic jihad conquest of the Iberian peninsula, and other parts of Europe, during the prior six centuries (p. 40):

It is permissible to set fire to the lands of the enemy, his stores of grain, his beasts of burden — if it is not possible for the Muslims to take possession of them — as well as to cut down his trees, to raze his cities, in a word, to do everything that might ruin and discourage him, provided that the imam (i.e. the religious 'guide' of the community of believers) deems these measures appropriate, suited to hastening the Islamization of that enemy or to weakening him. Indeed, all this contributes to a military triumph over him or to forcing him to capitulate.

The 20th century historian Charles Emmanuel Dufourcq—who studied the Islamization of Spain, Portugal, and North Africa in the Middle Ages—characterized (p. 40) the impact of these repeated attacks, indistinguishable in motivation from modern acts of jihad terrorism, such as the Madrid bombings on 3/11/04, the London bombings of 7/7/05, or the (mostly) foiled attacks in London and Glasgow of 6/29 and 6/30/07:

It is not difficult to understand that such expeditions sowed terror. The historian al—Maqqari, who wrote in seventeenth—century Tlemcen in Algeria, explains that the panic created by the Arab horsemen and sailors, at the time of the Muslim expansion in the zones that saw those raids and landings, facilitated the later conquest, if that was decided on: 'Allah,' he says, 'thus instilled such fear among the infidels that they did not dare to go and fight the conquerors; they only approached them as suppliants, to beg for peace.'

Writing in 1978, Dufourcq (d. 1982), worried (even then) that historical and cultural revisionism of this established legacy of jihad (in particular, the Muslim conquest and colonization of the Iberian peninsula) might precipitate a recurrence of,

...the upheaval carried out on our continent (i.e., Europe) by Islamic penetration more than a thousand years ago

Less than a decade after Dufourcq's death in 1982, the historian Bat Ye'or (from a 1991 French interview, published in English translation in 1994) echoed his intuitive concerns about Europe's re-Islamization, and warned more broadly,

I do not see serious signs of a Europeanization of Islam anywhere, a move that would be expressed in a relativization of religion, a self—critical view of the history of Islamic imperialism...we are light years away from such a development...On the contrary, I think that we are participating in the Islamization of Europe, reflected both in daily occurrences and in our way of thinking...All the racist fanaticism that permeates the Arab countries and Iran has been manifested in Europe in recent years...

Myriad intellectuals in denial might now, at last, wish to study with care the continuing legacy of jihad war, and pay serious attention to its modern Muslim proponents—including the jihadist cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who has been lionized—with tragic irony—by London's own current mayor as a “progressive.” Here are some more of Qaradawi's apposite views on jihad and jihad terrorism:

It has been determined by Islamic law that the blood and property of people of Dar Al—Harb [the Domain of Disbelief where the war for the domination of Islam should be waged, i.e. including within Western Europe and America] is not protected. Because they fight against and are hostile towards the Muslims, they annulled the protection of his blood and his property... in modern war, all of society, with all its classes and ethnic groups, is mobilized to participate in the war, to aid its continuation, and to provide it with the material and human fuel required for it to assure the victory of the state fighting its enemies. Every citizen in society must take upon himself a role in the effort to provide for the battle. The entire domestic front, including professionals, laborers, and industrialists, stands behind the fighting army, even if it does not bear arms.

Allah has also made the prophet Muhammad into an epitome for religious warriors [Mujahideen] since he ordered Muhammed to fight for religion... the first assignment is to prepare the hero who is willing to put his life in his own hands for Allah's sake, and he who does not care whether he encounters death or death encounters him...He [i.e., a self—immolating bomber] kills the enemy while taking self—risk, similarly to what Muslims did in the past... He wants to scare his enemies, and the religious authorities have permitted this. They said that if he causes the enemy both sorrow and fear of Muslims... he is permitted to risk himself and even get killed.

Qaradawi stated his ultimate goals explicitly—consistent with orthodox jihad ideology—at a Muslim youth convention in 1995 in Toledo, Ohio: “We will conquer Europe, we will conquer America!”. Subsequently Qaradawi issued a public fatwa on December 2, 2002, calling on Muslims to conquer Europe, stating, “Islam will return to Europe as a conqueror and a victor after being expelled from it twice – once from the south, from Andalusia, and a second time, from the east, when it knocked several times on the doors of Athens.” Qaradawi’s fatwa ruled, in addition, that Muslims should re-conquer, “former Islamic colonies to Andalus (Spain), southern Italy, Sicily, the Balkans and the Mediterranean islands.”

In light of the most recent attacks in London and Glasgow will the West's intellectuals finally awaken to this threat—the jihad? Will they study with seriousness and urgency the theological-juridical underpinnings of the Islamic jihad, and its 14 centuries of brutal, imperialistic conquests, continuing through the present, whose ultimate goals are the re-establishment of a supranational Muslim Caliphate, and imposition of Shari’a totalitarianism across the globe?

Julien Benda in his classic 1928 La Trahison de Clercs (The Treason of the Intellectuals) decried with prophetic accuracy how the abandonment of objective truth abetted totalitarian ideologies, which lead to the cataclysmic destruction of World War II. Ignoring, dismissing, or worse, continuing to vilify thoughtful and intrepid scholars such as Dufourcq and Bat Ye'or reflects the broader La Trahison de Clercs of our time: the complete failure of Western intellectuals to study, understand, and acknowledge the heinous consequences of the living Islamic institution of jihad war.

Finally, in an ironic but hopeful turn of events, perhaps this impassioned mea culpa from former British jihadist Hassan Butt will at last prove clarifying for the willfully blind and timorous non-Muslim elites in the West:

…it isn't enough for Muslims to say that because they feel at home in Britain they can simply ignore those passages of the Koran which instruct on killing unbelievers. By refusing to challenge centuries-old theological arguments, the tensions between Islamic theology and the modern world grow larger every day. It may be difficult to swallow but the reason why Abu Qatada - the Islamic scholar whom Palestinian militants recently called to be released in exchange for the kidnapped BBC journalist Alan Johnston - has a following is because he is extremely learned and his religious rulings are well argued. His opinions, though I now thoroughly disagree with them, have validity within the broad canon of Islam. [emphasis added]

The Muslim community in Britain must slap itself awake from this state of denial and realise there is no shame in admitting the extremism within our families, communities and worldwide co-religionists…Muslim scholars must go back to the books and come forward with a refashioned set of rules and a revised understanding of the rights and responsibilities of Muslims whose homes and souls are firmly planted in what I'd like to term the Land of Co-existence. And when this new theological territory is opened up, Western Muslims will be able to liberate themselves from defunct models of the world, rewrite the rules of interaction and perhaps we will discover that the concept of killing in the name of Islam is no more than an anachronism.